No Good Asking

by Fran Kimmel

  She couldn’t stay in this spot or the storm would tie her into itself, but she didn’t have a clue where to go from here. Fists inside gloves, gloves inside pockets, her hand scraped against the cold metal of the flashlight she’d stuffed deep into the pocket’s lining. She pulled it out and clumsily stabbed at the button until the world lit up, or at least a piece of it no bigger than a slide under a microscope, a fury of pelting ice flakes angrier than ants getting poked. She shot the shaky beam all around, but it was no good, she could see nothing but sideways snow—not the house, not the dog—the world was erased and her with it. Her breath thickened like porridge on its way to her chest. The soles of her feet, sharp crackles of hurt, melded into the frozen earth.

  There was a faint volley of barks behind her. She swung around, batting away snow with her useless glove, screaming the dog’s name. She heard nothing more from Thorn, just her own cries, her panicked breath like the clopping of hooves, until finally she made herself stop, the first aid teacher in her head nodding knowingly at her confusion.

  But then he was real, a muddle of legs, not a dream. She dropped. Such a good old dog, panting and quivering, right there beside her, utterly unruffled to find her down on her knees, as if she’d been waiting for him to bring back the stick.

  She hoisted the jumbled blanket under her arm, then hauled herself upright, leaning against Thorn’s frosted body so as to not lose him again. They were in agreement on this. Every time he pushed ahead a few steps, he stopped and waited until she caught up, barking shrilly to get her to hurry. Her flashlight banged against her pant leg, its trembling light no help at all.

  They trudged to the end of the long driveway. She could tell this now by the way the ground beneath her feet came up solid underneath. They were on open road, the wind whipping madly. She was no longer sinking as deep with each step, her runners dipping into ragged ruts of ice and snow that tires had made between plow runs. The Nylands had driven over this exact spot, the weight of their vehicles pressing down winter. It made her feel better, knowing they’d been here too, until she looked back toward where the house should be and was not.

  She could not feel her toes, peering down to see if they were still there. Thorn pulled away, woofing and yowling. The blanket, impossibly heavy, was making her too slow. She was about to drop it when the dog stopped, not a body length ahead. She could see the faint outline of his wagging tail.

  Walter hadn’t made it far, just a few feet down the road. He’d turned right instead of left, away from Neesley not toward it, going down in the snowy bank, bent at the waist, his top half tilting to one side, legs sprawled out in front. He was still, too still, ignoring the dog that was slobbering all over him.

  Afraid to get close, terrified he’d be dead, she still stumbled and skidded forward, dropping to her knees in front of him.

  “Grandpa. Grandpa Walter!” she cried, her words torn away in the wind. She lowered her ear close to his mouth to listen for signs of breath. Please, please, please breathe.

  He swung out and hit her squarely on her numb cheek, causing her to fall back in the snow. Awake now, he batted his arms as he struggled to stand.

  Get him inside. Get him out of the storm. Thorn had moved off, his job done, poking his nose in the pile of snow built up beside the road. She wrapped her blanket around Walter’s head and shoulders, gripped his arms, and tried to pull him up.

  “Get up!” she screamed, yanking hard on his sleeves, dragging him upward. “Get up now.”

  She could not get enough traction to bring him to his feet. Thorn was barking again, lifting his paws. Get him up. Get him up. Pull. Pull harder. But it was no good. He was too old, too heavy.

  She couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t leave him behind. Couldn’t take him with her. Couldn’t get her legs to work. She tried one more time to haul him out of the snow. Then she sat—there was nothing else to do—tucking herself against him under the blanket until he stopped struggling and leaned into her. Thorn stood guard in front of the pair, barking endlessly.

  A year passed, or a minute, before the shouts, faint at first but then clear and sure, getting nearer. She still had enough wits to bawl out hoarsely, “Here. We’re here.”

  —

  The storm had caused a power outage, likely from a falling branch or downed tree. Ellie couldn’t get the backup generator going, the switch too stubborn for her to trigger by herself. But she found the hurricane lantern with its stub of a wick and got the candles from the emergency box, arranging them in clusters on tabletops and window ledges. The room glowed with tiny trembling flames, corners filled with mauve-tipped shadows.

  Ellie put Sammy in his grandpa’s chair, where he rocked back and forth. She had explained in half sentences how Grandpa had gone into the storm, and Dad and Hannah and Danny too, and they needed to wait patiently for everyone to come back. Sammy seemed to understand the enormity of their circumstances, ear cocked to the bad night noises coming from outside their window.

  “Will they come now?” he kept asking, to which she repeatedly said, “Soon, buddy, soon,” praying she was right.

  Finally, she heard a commotion out front. Ellie ran to the door, opened it, and thrust her arms forward, preparing herself to catch what waited. They fell inside—one, two, three, all four—brittle, wind-whipped, the dog in front, silver with frost. Ellie covered her mouth with her palm at the sight of them all.

  “He made it to the road,” Danny stuttered, face blotched and swollen from the cold.

  Hannah looked so small in Danny’s old jacket, hunched inwards and shuddering. She wore her runners. She had no boots to wear.

  “Get away from the door!” Ellie cried. “Quickly now. Don’t worry about your shoes.”

  “Dan, build up the fire,” Eric ordered as he half carried, half dragged Walter into the living room and laid him on the couch; he looked alarmingly frail and crumpled lying there, his brash mouth still, lips pale and bloodless.

  “Hannah, stay close to Dan and get warm. Get those runners off.”

  Walter had started to revive, now struggling with Eric, as if Eric was a thief, trying to steal his clothes.

  “Stop hitting, Dad,” Eric told him. “I need to get your coat off.”

  Ellie clapped eyes on Eric. He’d called him Dad, not Walter. She dragged Myrtle’s chair in front of the fireplace. “Hannah, sit here.” She bent in front of the girl, fighting with her frozen laces, so desperate to get Hannah’s runners off that she grabbed the heels and pulled. The girl’s socks were rock solid, like slabs of meat from the freezer.

  “I’m sorry,” Hannah stuttered, barely moving her lips.

  It didn’t matter one fig to Ellie what the girl had promised; she’d come back in one piece.

  “Do they hurt?” she asked, pulling off Hannah’s socks.

  “I’m sorry,” Hannah said again, shivering uncontrollably.

  “Oh, darling.” Ellie surprised herself: darling was a word she never used. “You’re safe. Everyone is safe.” Hannah’s toes were only milky white, not spongy or blue, but Ellie needed Eric to take a look before she could be sure.

  Danny built up the fire, adding kindling and three logs from the wooden box. “Will Grandpa be okay? We thought he’d gone to the barn like he always does.” He looked truly rattled, as if he’d never considered an option where his grandpa could be irreversibly lost. The times before, Danny had grumped about what a nuisance these searches were. “Thorn went crazy. Good thing he’s such a loud barker, or Grandpa would still be in the snowbank.”

  Ellie squeezed Danny’s hand. “You’re very brave, Danny. Both you and Hannah.”

  She looked over her shoulder to the scene on the couch, Eric still fending off kicks as he tried to remove Walter’s boots.

  “At least he’s fighting back.” Danny unzipped his coat and threw off his hat. “That’s good, right?”

  “Grandpa w
ill be fine,” Ellie said. Walter had to pull through for Eric’s sake.

  Danny’s cheeks had already lost their mottled look, although it was hard to distinguish colours in the quivering light. He hadn’t taken off his boots, good to minus forty. His toes would be fine—and the rest of him too.

  Ellie looked from one son to the other. Sammy hadn’t moved from his chair by the window, his concerned face tipped toward his grandpa.

  Ellie was most concerned about Hannah, who had not stopped shivering. She wrapped the girl in one of the blankets she’d gathered from their bedroom and threw another over Danny’s shoulders. Ice cold herself, Ellie felt anchored, steadier on her feet when she looked at her husband’s solid frame kneeling beside Walter. More convinced they could get through this.

  Fourteen

  Eric concentrated on the tasks before him. His mind had slowed, calculating next moves like he was dismantling a bomb. Warm his father, not too quickly; focus on the chest, neck, head, groin; check extremities, the strength of his heartbeat. Hannah too—toes, fingers, cheeks.

  He’d managed to wrestle Walter out of his coat and boots, but he needed more heat. More light.

  “Ellie, get the thermometer. And the electric blanket. And Hannah, move back a little, you’re too close to that fire.” If her skin had been damaged, she could burn herself without feeling it.

  “I’ll be right back,” he told them. “I’m going downstairs to get the generator working.”

  Flashlight in hand, Eric made his way down the narrow staircase to the basement. He followed the beam along the concrete wall, past the shelves of his mother’s dwindling preserves, past the washer and dryer and the Christmas turkey bulging out of the sink. When he got to the panel, he used two hands to throw the stiff transfer switch, disconnecting from the grid and shooting power through the circuits. The furnace spit and groaned as a circle of light spilled out of Dan’s bedroom.

  He had failed in vigilance. Tonight of all nights. Christmas. And the goddamn howling wind, enough to freeze a body from the inside out. Walter might have been a nasty brute his whole life, but what remained of him was a diminished old man in need of protection—protection that Eric had failed to provide. How long had he been out there?

  And Hannah! When he had seen her in that snowbank, bunched under the blanket with Walter, he thought he’d been plunged into a nightmare, none of it real. But then she threw herself at him, clinging to his jacket, mumbling through clattering teeth about how Grandpa was after his truck. Not finding Walter in time would have haunted him. But losing Hannah—he was terrified to even imagine that.

  When he got back upstairs, Christmas bulbs sparkled, illuminating an enormous stack of gaily wrapped presents. The kids sat side by side on the floor, a safe distance from the raging fire. Dan, stripped down to his shirt, was flipping logs with the poker, yakking nonstop. Hannah was wrapped like a cocoon in her blanket, her feet nudging out, tucked into Ellie’s joke gorilla slippers. Sammy sat unusually still over on Walter’s chair, clutching his red truck with both hands, his eyes focused on the covered lump that was his grandpa.

  “I tried to cover Thorn, but he wouldn’t have it,” Ellie said. She had plugged the extension cord into the Christmas tree socket, dragged it across the floor, and attached it to the electric blanket over Walter.

  “Is it turned to low?” Eric asked. “We can’t thaw him out too fast.”

  Ellie hovered over Walter, fiddling with the blanket’s control button. “I’ve taken his temperature.” She held out the thermometer to Eric, biting her lip. “Thirty-five degrees, Eric.”

  “We can work with that,” Eric said. “He’ll be okay.”

  Ellie felt a gust of relief. She’d been worried Walter would need to be taken to the hospital, and they could not get him there, not in time.

  Eric bent over his father, leaning awkwardly because of the dog, and pressed his fingers against Walter’s scrawny neck.

  “He’s got a weak but steady pulse, not likely to stop anytime soon.” He lifted the blanket, searching for discoloured blotches, feeling the texture of his paper-thin skin. “There’s no trace of frostbite that I can see.”

  “He said he wants his supper,” Ellie whispered. She was the one who’d said no to a lock for his door. “I’ll make him a pie—billows of meringue.”

  Eric turned to her, smiling weakly. “Walter should lose himself more often.” He squeezed her shoulder. “He’s sleeping now. He just needs some rest.”

  Walter opened his eyes, banging his arm against the couch to get everyone’s attention. “Crack a window, Myrtle,” he ordered. “It’s too goddamned close in here.”

  Ellie saw Eric take a deep, slow breath. If his father was not ready to go, perhaps Eric was not ready to let him.

  He looked at the kids, who’d turned on their blankets to face him, their backs to the snapping fire. “You all right? Warm yet?”

  Daniel pulled his shirt away from his chest, panting. “Are you kidding? I got three logs going.”

  “How about you, Hannah?” he asked. “Are you warm?”

  Daniel answered for her: “She’s warm as toast. Right, Hannah?”

  “Blow out the candles, will you,” Eric said to Daniel, who jumped up and stomped around the room, leaving tiny smoke signals everywhere he went.

  Eric asked Hannah, “Have you got feeling in your toes and fingers?”

  Hannah nodded without looking up.

  Ellie had been watching Eric closely, the steadiness of his hands, the way his eyes swept the room, absorbing the smallest of details. He functioned best when he had something on the line. She loved him for that. She loved him more in this moment than ever before.

  Hannah hadn’t said a word since I’m sorry. Ellie knelt in front of the girl and cupped her hands around Hannah’s, blowing on the tips of her fingers.

  “Danny was right. They feel warm as toast.” Hannah did not take her hands away. “And your teeth have stopped chattering.”

  Eric came toward them and bent down on one knee, his fingers reaching under Ellie’s, finding Hannah’s wrist, counting her heartbeats.

  “You okay, kiddo? Let’s get a look at those toes.”

  Ellie watched as he pulled off one gorilla, then the other, bending Hannah’s toes this way and that, pressing along the bottom of her soles.

  “You’re okay,” Eric said. Then he added, “But I don’t want you doing that again. Not ever.”

  Hannah looked up. “You’re mad at me?”

  “Of course not!” Eric and Ellie said at once, pressing into each other.

  Without consciously thinking about it, all this time Ellie had been counting the hours until Hannah would leave. Twenty-nine, twenty-eight. Barely more than a day. A dread overcame her. How could she have wasted a second of their time together? While she’d been fretting over the minutiae of her family’s everyday lives—worst-case scenarios—the girl had been standing right there in front of her self-absorbed fog, as bright as the sun.

  “I could use your help,” Ellie said to her. “We need warm drinks. Hot chocolate or tea? What do you think?”

  “Hot chocolate,” Hannah said, some of her colour regained.

  “Good choice,” Ellie said, taking Hannah’s hand and lifting her up, Sammy beside her now, the three solemnly proceeding to the kitchen.

  “I’m starving,” Daniel yelled after them.

  “Where the hell’s supper?” Walter said. “I want my chips.”

  Eric laughed. “It’s settled then. Dan’s starving, Walter wants his chips. The Nylands are back in business.”

  The kitchen became a beehive of activity. They raided the fridge, sliced up cheese and pickles. Eric helped make a heaping plate of sandwiches and hot chocolate with marshmallows melting like little snowballs. The family ate with plates on laps, arms reaching, knees touching, breadcrumbs skittering in all directions, Hann
ah cushioned in the thick of it.

  It was not yet six in the morning when they packed tightly near the warmth of the fire. Stomachs full, a drowsiness overcame them. Walter stretched out the length of the couch under the electric blanket, his temperature rising, snoring in synchrony with the dog, who hadn’t moved from his spot since he’d come in from the cold, not even when Daniel dropped ham from his sandwich in front of his nose.

  “Merry Christmas,” Ellie said. She was facing the tree, between Eric’s knees, his arms wrapped across her chest.

  Eric squeezed tighter. “Let’s open presents. See what Santa brought.”

  Sammy put down his truck. Walter snorted and grumbled in his sleep. Daniel darted to the edge of the tree, reached beneath branches, grabbed the small gift he’d hidden under the skirt, and dumped it unceremoniously on Hannah’s lap.

  Hannah stood suddenly, clutching her present from Daniel. “Wait! Please wait!” she begged, running off, too-big slippers slapping against the floorboards.

  —

  The tempest petered out as if it had all been a joke, leaving nothing but a harmless blue sky over a desert of snow, shiny and blinding under the too-bright sun.

  Betty called on Christmas Day a little before noon. She’d stopped in at the station to hand out chocolates and gave Eric the Neesley rundown. John Welsh had escaped from his group home again. The group home staff called the station at 8:15 a.m., unable to confirm exactly how long he’d been missing. Constables King and Cruikshank were well into their search when some out-of-towner from B.C., a Christmas visitor, called 9-1-1 on her cell phone. She’d crashed into John as she was jogging through Memorial Park. Jogging! As if it were a reasonable pastime in this kind of weather. John reared up from the garbage can beside the picnic shelter, big as a bear, scaring the bejesus out of the woman. The constables collected them both and drove the shaken and cold out-of-towner to a house on 13th Street, and then dropped John back at the station, where they gave him a few candy canes pilfered from their stash of Christmas paraphernalia.